The page is blank. You may be writing about the world you’ve experienced, but the meaning you find for your stories always starts in you – nowhere else.Oleh Bill Kenower

Artists can start believing too much in struggle and in what they find difficult. However, what comes most easily to us is usually the expression of our natural genius, where our interest wants to go.Oleh Bill Kenower

Writing requires inspired ideas. But we can’t demand them, can’t use our craft to manufacture them. But we can practice putting ourselves into the frame of mind that allows and invites them.Oleh Bill Kenower

As Richard Bach pointed out: writers aren’t looking for an editor or a publisher, but a member of their intellectual family. They’re out there, but you have to believe they exist to find them.Oleh Bill Kenower

We need our readers to fill in what we leave out; it’s what really finishes a story. This means we have to trust them, even though sometimes they don’t make the connections we hope.Oleh Bill Kenower

As Beethoven no doubt knew – there’s nothing better than joy, and creativity teaches us again and again it’s always inside of us, never outside of us.Oleh Bill Kenower

The time I learned why being an author is so valuable, and how we can use this authority to allow people to believe the stories they actually want to believe.Oleh Bill Kenower

A true story about how physical pain and suffering taught me a lot about all suffering. If I’m honest, most of it wasn’t real, wasn’t necessary.Oleh Bill Kenower

If you’re like me, you prefer to be alone while you write. But you’re also never lonely, at least not when it’s going well. That’s because loneliness is feeling disconnected from that to which you always want connection. Writing is one way to practice that connection.Oleh Bill Kenower

Just like you can’t know every sentence in a paragraph before you write it, so too you can’t know how your career or life will unfold. As creative people, we must be more interested in what interests us most, and less on how we will sell it, publish it, or monetize it.Oleh Bill Kenower

Sometimes editing is hard because all those passages we reread and don’t like remind us of the parts of our life that seem to have happened to us but we know on some level we created ourselves. Writing is a chance to practice making choices on purpose, to choose what we actually want, to always be the author of our lives.…

Every story has three arcs: The Physical, The Emotional, and The Intentional. The last is the most important – why you’re telling the story, the gift you’re giving the reader. Until you know it, you don’t know what the story is really about.Oleh Bill Kenower

It’s easy for writers to put all their attention on results – the finished book, the contract, the sales – and start believing that the experience of writing, what we’re actually doing, doesn’t really matter. Not only does your experience matter, it’s the only thing that matters.Oleh Bill Kenower

Writing can be like a performance since we never really know what’s going to happen when sit down at the desk. We must trust we’ll know what to write when our attention meets the story, when we’re actually present with our creative desire.Oleh Bill Kenower

It’s not for the money, though that’s always nice. And it’s not for the recognition or praise. No, it’s always so we can receive what we want to give. That’s the real creative transaction we all crave.Oleh Bill Kenower

This one of the most common hard parts for writers is taking that messy first draft and turning into something we’d actually like to share with others. The key is asking the right questions while we rewrite, the ones that keep us in the seat of our creativity.Oleh Bill Kenower

Our voice is not an expression of some discovered style, or of talent, or intelligence, but rather our unique interest. Let your work express that, what you actually care about in a story, in a scene, in a sentence, and your authentic voice will come through naturally.Oleh Bill Kenower

The big successes – the completed book, the published novel, the good sales – are always an accumulation of little successes. Yet writers often don’t appreciate those small successes because they don’t think they really count until the big ones have been met.Oleh Bill Kenower

Sometimes writers feel like beggars asking for handouts as they submit their work. But we’re not. We’re not asking for anything, we’re giving something. We just need to remember the value of what it is we’re offering.Oleh Bill Kenower

Whether you use this language or not, you know what it feels like when you get out of your own way. But how do we do that? The key is getting curious, asking questions in which we’re sincerely interested, and then accepting any answer that comes.Oleh Bill Kenower

Sometimes sitting down and having no ideas, no inspiration, can feel like the kind of nothingness we picture when we imagine failure. Except there is no such thing as nothing. We just can’t yet see what is there.Oleh Bill Kenower

All rejection starts at home. First, the writer rejects herself by worrying what someone will think of her work, then the public rejects the book because it doesn’t feel authentic. Our job is to satisfy no one but ourselves. Success will naturally follow.Oleh Bill Kenower

A listener wanted to know how to get her story to “settle down” so she could tell it. The real discipline of writing is learning how to tell the difference between forcing and allowing, to know whether we’re following an idea that belongs in the story we’re telling, or simply starting a new one.Oleh Bill Kenower

Just like your stories are within you as they’re being written, so too the success you so desire. Don’t look for it in the world around you. You won’t really see it. Go inside, and find it where it lives.Oleh Bill Kenower

Can’t find the time to write? Your life too busy, what with the job and the kids and just being tired at the end of the day? The question probably isn’t, “Where do I find the time to write?” But, “Is writing a waste of time?” It’s not, but sometimes it can seem that way.Oleh Bill Kenower

In which I answer a question from a listener who wants to follow his muse but sees so much failure around him. Does it really work. What if it leads you astray?Oleh Bill Kenower

If you’re ever feeling uninterested in life or yourself or your work, remember you’re just looking in the wrong place for what you want.Oleh Bill Kenower

The story of how I reconnected with the woman is who is now my wife is also the story about how I learned where all stories come from. Everything authentic begins and ends with an alive stillness that requires nothing, but is always creating.Oleh Bill Kenower

It’s not enough to learn our craft, we also have to practice emotional mastery – finding our inherent confidence every single time we sit down to write. It’s always there, finding it anew every day requires practice. Episode 7: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2204720/episodes/13084129Oleh Bill Kenower

The biggest difference between most beginning and more seasoned writers, is the experienced author understands how little they actually need to know to start writing. Don’t try to do the Muse’s job. Instead, collaborate with her to tell your story.Oleh Bill Kenower

You may see the success other people have had, and think you want it – but you don’t. You’ve only ever wanted your success, the same as you’ve only ever wanted to live your life.Oleh Bill Kenower

You don’t really need to know how to do it, or where to go, or what should come next. All you really need to know is that you’re interested – in the book, the career, in the relationship. Trust that your interest is enough and you’ll be guided by it.Oleh Bill Kenower

A true story of how my imagination invented a nightmare and just a quickly dispelled it. A reminder to only pay attention to what inspires and soothes us.Oleh Bill Kenower

Doing what love is always the most practical choice, even if you don’t know where you’re going or how you’ll succeed. Forcing anything is guaranteed failure.Oleh Bill Kenower

Entertaining our readers is not about spoon-feeding “what they want,” but offering them what we value, what we want to share, in a way that best allows them to receive it.Oleh Bill Kenower

When we make an excuse for why we don’t have the time to write or why can’t get published, we’re describing a reality we don’t want to live in. When we stop making these excuses, we give ourselves a chance to see a different, and better, reality.Oleh Bill Kenower

Humility isn’t saying you’re not a good writer, or that someone is better than you. It’s about learning how to be grateful for what provides inspiration, and what answers the questions that keep us up at night.Oleh Bill Kenower

Care about how you feel while you write. You always want to feel good and you never want to feel bad. Thinking some result out in the future is more important than how you feel in the present is a recipe for procrastination and failure.Oleh Bill Kenower

Every story has three arcs: the Physical Arc, the Emotional Arc, and the Intentional Arc. The Intentional, why the story is being told, is the most important, but often the hardest to find. Yet without it, the story has no meaning or center.Oleh Bill Kenower

We spend our lives trying to satisfy it, in the books we read and the books we write. The only reason you don’t like something you’ve written is because it doesn’t satisfy that aesthetic. Our trouble starts when we forget that.Oleh Bill Kenower

It’s not thinking. Our job is to have questions we’re interested in, ask them of our imagination, and then trust that the answer will come.Oleh Bill Kenower

Writing and sharing our work can be as normal as breathing. Unless, that is, we hold breath as we wonder if other people will like it.Oleh Bill Kenower

This isn’t school. This isn’t a math class. When you write fearlessly, there’s only one correct answer, and only you will ever know it.Oleh Bill Kenower

As writers we have to care as much about the words we use when we describe our own life and experiences, as we do when we describe a scene in our stories.Oleh Bill Kenower

Rejection, saying no to something, is a part of the creative process, not just what happens sometimes when people don’t like our stuff.Oleh Bill Kenower

You can’t read anyone’s mind, you can’t make anyone buy anything – and you don’t have to. Just share what is so awesome about your story.Oleh Bill Kenower

Writing is all about questions. We ask them, and something else answers. Ask the wrong question, and we’ll only get into trouble.Oleh Bill Kenower

It’s rare to be in the mood when you start. Your first and most important job is to get into that relaxed, curious, receptive state of mind, and then start writing.Oleh Bill Kenower

The inner critic isn’t going to help you. He or she is only the voice of fear.Oleh Bill Kenower

When we can learn to see fear as guidance, we can use the experience to help us stay in the moment, where all stories are actually told.Oleh Bill Kenower